The Graduate Theological Union, in conjunction with the Center for Arts, Religion and Education, sponsored Modern Divine: An Interfaith Panel on Art and Spirituality on October 27 at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. The panel, consisting of Deena Aranoff, CJS, Devin Zuber, PSR, Munir Jiwa, CIS, and Riess Potterveld, GTU (moderator), shared insights and reflections on works of art in the CJM exhibit Beyond Belief: 100 Years of the Spiritual in Modern Art. (http://beyondbelief.thecjm.org/) This collaborative event showcased not only varied expressions of spirituality through...

From the Fall 2016 issue of Currents, view PDF
By Elizabeth S. Peña
Picturing things, taking a view, is what makes us human; art is making sense and giving shape to that sense. It is like the religious search for God. —Gerhard Richter
The arts—literature, dance, music, and the visual arts—enhance religious experience and evoke transcendence. Artistic expression often provides common ground for scholars and practitioners representing a wide variety of faith traditions. In the classroom the arts offer entry into complex concepts and philosophies. These are just a few of the reasons why the...

by Arthur Holder
from Currents Fall 2015
Responding to the changing landscapes of the academy and the wider society, the GTU has created an innovative approach to doctoral education that features new opportunities for interdisciplinary scholarship and interreligious conversation. Students who enter the PhD and ThD programs at the GTU in fall 2016 will be able to take advantage of this new approach. The curriculum recently adopted by the Core Doctoral Faculty builds on the historic strengths of the GTU while making the doctoral program more responsive to the diverse research interests and...

On Friday July 12, 2013, the Center for Islamic Studies Visiting Scholar, Carol Bier, presented her Islamic art workshop entitled, "Geometry and Islamic Art: Explorations of Number, Shape, and the Nature of Space" at the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS) UGM Graduate School in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Through a brief illustrated introduction and hands-on exercises, the workshop provided participants with an opportunity to explore the aspects of Islamic art and architecture that rely on the relationships between numbers, shapes, and the nature of space (i.e. the spacial...

The Hillside Club (2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley) is hosting this illustrated lecture by CIS Visiting Scholar Carol Bier, curator of the exhibition, Reverberating Echoes: Contemporary Art Inspired by Traditional Islamic Art, on display at the Doug Adams Gallery from January 31-May 26, 2017. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Center for Islamic Studies and the Hillside Club.
https://www.facebook.com/events/241594596267525/, https://sites.google.com/a/hillsideclub.org/hillsideclub/fsm

An institution of higher learning unlike any other, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley brings together scholars of the world’s diverse religions and wisdom traditions to advance new knowledge, share inspiration, and collaborate on solutions.